Following his baptism by John the Baptist, Christ retired to the wilderness for forty days: "And he was there . . . forty days, tested by Satan; and was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered to him" (Mark 1:13). This picture, an early work by Moretto from about 1515, is a fragment of a larger canvas that must have continued past the sketchy cherubim at the left and showed other events from Christ’s life.

This is an early work by Alessandro Bonvicino, known as Moretto da Brescia, who, along with Girolamo Romanino, was the dominant painter in the city of Brescia (then in the westernmost area of Venice’s mainland empire) in the first half of the sixteenth century. It represents the biblical scene that follows Christ’s Baptism, when he retired to the wilderness for forty days: "And he was there . . . forty days, tested by Satan; and was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered to him." (Mark 1:13). Christ sits pensively in rocky terrain, surrounded by animals, some real and some imaginary. The appearance of a snake and a lion probably alludes to a verse from the Psalms (91:13): "Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet." This would also account for the dragon or basilisk-type animal at the center of the canvas.

As early as 1943, Gombosi suggested that the MMA picture was a fragment of a larger composition that may have included a Christ Blessing Saint John the Baptist in the National Gallery, London (see also Penny 2004; see Additional Images). That the painting is, indeed, a fragment was confirmed during a restoration in 1988 that uncovered two small angels in the upper right of the composition and a semi-circle of winged cherub heads in the upper left. These had been overpainted but their existence was known from X-rays (see Additional Images). The cherub heads probably formed part of a radiance surrounding a figure of God the Father appearing to Christ and ordering the angels to minister to him. Their presence makes it clear that the composition originally extended at the left and at the top. The appearance of the original work remains hypothetical. It is possible that the canvas formed part of a considerably larger devotional work, though whether this may have included the painting in London remains no more than a hypothesis. The two paintings are certainly of about the same date (ca. 1515–20), have similar landscapes and palette, and their narratives are related. In the London painting Christ is about to step on "the stony solitary path which leads to the wilderness," as described by the historian Horatio Brown in 1896 (Penny 2004). However the scale of the figures is rather different and it is difficult to imagine how the two canvases could be meaningfully joined. It is also possible that the work from which the MMA picture was excised included the portrait of a donor (a comparable example would be the Baptism of Christ with a Donor painted in the 1550s by Giovanni Battista Moroni, who studied with Moretto (private collection, Milan; see Andrea Bayer in Painters of Reality: The Legacy of Leonardo and Caravaggio in Lombardy, exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2004, pp. 128–29, no. 37).

This painting was purchased for the Metropolitan Museum by the curator Bryson Burroughs in 1911. He had a particular interest in north Italian paintings of this school, a taste that had been developed by Charles Eastlake, the first director of the National Gallery, London, a generation earlier, and by the great Italian connoisseur Giovanni Morelli. Following their leads, Burroughs was able to put together an important group of Brescian painting for the MMA (see Bayer 2015).

Paolo Brognoli. Nuova guida per la città di Brescia. Brescia, 1826, p. 218, mentions a Saint John in the desert by Moretto, probably this picture, in the collection of Rodolfo Vantini; states that the collection was put together by Rodolfo's father, Domenico Vantini.

P[ietro]. d[a] P[onte]. L'opera del Moretto. Brescia, 1898, p. 76, refers to it as a dark work from Moretto's late period; states that it was withdrawn from the Bonomi-Cereda sale in 1896, and sold privately to Lotmar, Bern.

Gustavo Frizzoni. Letter to Jean Paul Richter. December 12, 1910 [see Ref. Richter 1910], writes that Morelli thought it was an early work by Moretto, while Cavenaghi ascribed it to his circle, and that it came from the Bonomi-Cereda collection.

Jean Paul Richter. Letter to Edward Robinson [director of the MMA]. December 30, 1910, calls it an early work by Moretto.

Roberto Longhi. "Quesiti caravaggeschi—II: i precedenti." Pinacotheca 1 (March–June 1929), p. 270, compares it with Moretto's Christ carrying the cross with a donor (Pinacoteca dell'Accademia Carrara, Bergamo) and with the London Christ Blessing Saint John the Baptist, dating all three works 1518 and noting the influence of Titian and Vincenzo Foppa.

[Georg] Gronau inAllgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler. 25, Leipzig, 1931, p. 141, lists it with the London picture and with another scene from the life of Christ in the Pinacoteca dell'Accademia Carrara, Bergamo.

Bernhard Berenson. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Oxford, 1932, p. 375, lists it as an early work.

Harry B. Wehle. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: A Catalogue of Italian, Spanish, and Byzantine Paintings. New York, 1940, pp. 160–61, ill., calls it an early work, with the freedom of a sketch, and a treatment similar to the London Christ and the Baptist.

György Gombosi. Moretto da Brescia. Basel, 1943, pp. 106, 110, no. 159, fig. 113, calls it a fragment of a larger work, to which the London Christ and the Baptist may also have belonged.

Bernard Berenson. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Central Italian and North Italian Schools. London, 1968, vol. 1, pp. 277–78, calls it a companion to the London Christ Blessing Saint John the Baptist.

Carlo Volpe. "Dosso: segnalazioni e proposte per il suo primo itinerario." Paragone 25 (July 1974), p. 25, calls it a companion of the London picture, and considers the two works difficult to place in a reconstruction of Moretto's early career.

Valerio Guazzoni. Moretto: il tema sacro. Brescia, 1981, p. 17, colorpl. 5, dates it 1515–20, together with the London picture and two works in the Pinacoteca dell'Accademia Carrara, Bergamo (Christ with the Samaritan woman; Christ carrying the cross with donor); states that all four works were meant for private, domestic devotions; notes the influence of Romanino and Venetian art.

Federico Zeri with the assistance of Elizabeth E. Gardner. Italian Paintings: A Catalogue of the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, North Italian School. New York, 1986, pp. 43–44, pl. 70, call it a fragment, possibly from the same work as the London picture, to which it is closely related; date both paintings about 1520.

Andrea Bayer inThe Dictionary of Art. 22, New York, 1996, p. 107, dates it about 1518 and calls it possibly a fragment.

Andrea Bayer. "North of the Apennines: Sixteenth-Century Italian Painting in Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 60 (Spring 2003), pp. 26–27, figs. 19 (color), 20 (before restoration), dates it about 1515; states that the recently revealed angels at right and cherubim at left had probably been painted out to disguise the fact that the work is a fragment [see Notes]; believes that the suggestions that it constituted the background of a larger work or formed a pair with the London painting remain conjectural.